1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a tool for cutting material particularly a tool for cutting out samples of material.
1. The Prior Art
Cutting solid material,including abrasive solid material e.g., solid rocket fuel presents several problems. For example, solid rocket fuel or propellant can be in the shape of a hollow cylinder which is mounted inside a plastic liner material, mounted in turn,inside a metal casing. If one wish to remove a sample of such fuel for testing, one can only cut the propellant from the inside so as to avoid cutting into the metal rocket housing or casing.
To cut out a test sample of such propellant, one must cut channels around such sample and then undercut the so-excavated sample to remove same. A suitable test sample size, is e.g. 2 in. by 2 in. by 15 in.
In the past, such samples have been excised using common knifes or saw blades, straight or bent as shown, for example, in FIG. 1. Such make-shift tools have been highly inefficient and ineffective and have required numerous manhours. Such tools have also caused numerous propellant cuttings and waste along with highly inflammable or explosive propellant dust. Accordingly, the prior art tools have proved laborious, wasteful and unsafe, in excising samples of solid material. In other prior art, a milling cutter for rocket solid propellant includes a cutting arm that is attached at a center location to a rotatable arbor, as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,541,757 to Reynolds (1985). Such cutting tool has an inverted T-shape with a cutting blade laying flat on the bottom of the "T" thereof, connecting to two upstanding vertical blades at the end of the "T", which tool rotates in contact with a block of rocket propellant to cut horizontal and vertical surfaces out of such block as the "T" blades are rotated. Thus steps or indentations can be cut into such blocks but cutting out of fuel samples is not intended nor suggested by this reference. Thus the Reynolds cutting tool is suited for surface shaving or milling operations and uses three blades mounted at right angles to each other.
Accordingly only crude unsuitable or unsafe tools have here-to-fore been available for excising samples of material and there is a need and market for a tool design that overcomes the above prior art short comings.
There has now been discovered a tool for cutting through solid material, which may be operated more quickly and with less effort by an operator, with a pronounced reduction in material shavings and resulting dust than previously possible with prior art tools.
Such tool is safer and less laborious to use and is more productive than cutting tools previously available.